In past decades the publicity surrounding health concerns regarding the popular debate of the content of cigarettes and additive chemicals included therein has greatly increased. In the years following the continued and repeated publicity surrounding the motives and methods of large tobacco based industry and the content of their products has caused much question in the mind of consumers as to the product they use.
In addition to such publicity surrounding cigarette content, recent social popularity urges full disclosure and knowledge of other FDA overseen products such as food. A demographic of consumers chooses to purchase goods from distributors supporting a full disclosure and custom tailored business model for the consumer.
For years, individuals have rolled or filled their own pre-formed cigarette wrappers, generally with tobacco, but also often with other substances. Coupled with concern for content of cigarettes, personal customization of filler material and a variety of desired fillers not commercially available in cigarettes, the growing movement toward the filling of cigarette wrappers with custom filler materials has become a service provided by boutique or personalized services to accommodate the preferences of individual customers. The filler material in these cigarettes include but are not limited to tobacco, flavored tobacco, herbs and other combustible materials one may desire to smoke according to preference.
This business model is not exclusive of the cigarette and recreational smoking industry as it has grown to encompass a market segment of smokers who prefer a personalized fill for their cigarettes creating demand for such products and services. With this demand comes a need to enable the limited volume production of cigarettes tailored to individual or limited numbers of consumers. The typical business that provides such service is a small independently owned business with a limited customer base.
Large tobacco industries of course have solutions for manufacture of large quantities of cigarettes; however these solutions are not suitable of a limited run of 50 or 100 cigarettes for instance. These manufacturing solutions are designed to support the mass manufacture cigarettes at a rate of approximately 5.5 trillion per year, or 15 billion per day. Changeover for small run customization of such manufacturing machinery is neither cost effective nor sensible. Furthermore, such solutions are much too large and expensive for the boutique business owner or individual enthusiast utilizing such a machine for personal use.
The production of limited runs of customer tailored cigarette products require smaller more cost efficient apparatus designed for small run manufacturing of cigarettes regardless of if the manufacture of the cigarettes are by the final consumer or by a retail business.
The most efficient method of making custom cigarettes is currently with the use of pre-formed cigarette wrappers that exist in both conical and cylindrical forms. Some boutique businesses prefer the method of filling pre-formed tube-shaped cigarette wrappers as it simplifies the process, but filling such wrappers individually is time consuming and as a result the product manufacture cost is prohibitively high to the retailer to sell at a reasonable profit. As a result, such entities have adopted some apparatuses and methods to attempt a more efficient yet still customizable manufacturing approach to such products.
Some devices available in the prior art surrounding the art of filling pre-formed cigarette wrappers use a plunger-type mechanism. In such devices, the filler material such as tobacco is inserted to pack into the pre-formed tubular wrappers by means of a protrusion for the purposes of packing the filler material such as tobacco into the preformed cigarette wrapper tube from a large volume or reservoir of filler material. A problem with such solutions is that the plunger may catch on the wrapper tube and cause tears, creases, wrinkles in the form of the wrapper. Furthermore, many of these devices fill one pre-formed cigarette tube at a time making for a very time intensive manufacture of cigarettes.
Other devices in the prior art enable the sequential manufacture of cigarettes with a plunger-type mechanism. Such apparatus share in the problematic filling of wrapper tubes that can cause tears, creases and wrinkles in the wrapper. Furthermore, such machines do not ensure a consistent fill per wrapper tube so consistency from one cigarette to the next may not be as desired.
Other devices still, in the prior art, use a vibration or striking method which is either manually or mechanically driven to distribute filler material into pre-formed cigarette wrappers held in a vertical configuration in order to fill a plurality of pre-formed cigarette tube wrappers simultaneously followed by a symmetric multi-plunger unit to compact the fill from the top in a consistent manner. By using this process, the user ends up with a substantially homogeneous fill between cigarettes per batch. However, such apparatuses are limited in the number of pre-formed wrappers they may fill simultaneously. Thus, scaling such an apparatus to accommodate larger numbers produces an overtly cumbersome machine due to larger counterweighting needs to facilitate proper vibration dynamics.
The closest known prior art employs a horizontally planar apparatus comprising a spinning platform with circular recesses in a boundary housing to accept a plurality of pre-formed cigarette wrappers. As the platform spins, the user deposits the predetermined filler material onto the spinning platform in the dispensing area to be distributed centrifugally to each pre-formed wrapper. The problems existing with this machine are first the prior art lacks a catch basin. Expensive filler material is strewn around the room. Any filler material that is not captured within the pre-rolled cigarette wrappers may be ejected from the apparatus and wasted. Wasted filler material creates financial losses. If the material is ejected, it is undesirable to recapture potentially soiled filler material for eventual consumption when smoked. Furthermore, if the expectation of lost filler material exists, the manufacturer may have to account for ejected and wasted filler material and prepare a larger amount than necessary to fill the pre-formed cigarette wrappers. Thusly, any excess overage remaining after the manufacture further creates an additional avenue for waste.
Another problem with the known prior art are the recesses that constrain the wrappers during the operation of the unit. The recesses in the prior art are circular within a rectangular profile and resultantly provide substantial ineffective area on which filler material gets caught on rather than into a pre-formed wrapper. In the case of the vertically centered and tangentially oriented round recesses surrounding the entirety of the perimeter boundary, the amount of ineffective area is 21.4% while only 78.6% is effective area due to the inherent properties associated with a circular profile inscribed within a rectangular profile.
This problem forces a user to manually insert the remainder of the filler into individual cigarette wrappers or once again requiring the user to utilize an excess amount of filler material than that dictated by the amount needed to fill the pre-formed wrappers.
Further still, such prior art items operating as a spinning platform unit are not capable of stopping outside of a ‘spin-down’ which is used herein to describe the natural decrease of rotational velocity predominantly due to friction or using a foreign object or hand to arrest the spinning motion. This creates a potentially dangerous situation and injurious situation to the user or those unaware of a unit left to spin-down unattended.
Finally the lid on the prior art does not lie flat on the boundary housing, thus filler material is wasted as it flows over the top of the boundary housing.